What are you watching now?

[Peter]

Have you, Peter, seen Mahler (1974) by Ken Russell? As you lately spoke about Gustav Holst, perhaps you'll enjoy Russell's own view of The Planets (only fragmentarily availabe, on youtube ). The motion picture title is The Planets. He is not a director of my predilection, too spectacular.

Now watching Waterloo (1970), starring Rod Steiger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEdNYPV8u6E

Sorry for the late response, only just noticed the post. Yes I've seen it as well as his Tchaikovsky 'The music lovers' and the best of his composer portraits, 'Elgar' in both the early 1962 black and white version and the later colour remake.

[Enrique]

Glad you did. I've seen The music lovers too. The Waterloo picture I mentioned features the most expensive battle scene ever filmed (converting money to present values) according to Wikipedia.

[Enrique]

The Mosquito Coast: Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren (1986).

[Decrepit Poster]

Some days ago I discovered the full 1948 film adaptation of Oliver Twist on YouTube. I'd not seen it before. I was immediately arrested by its music score, which turns out to have been composed by Sir Arnold Bax! Even discounting that, it's an excellent film, in my opinion.

Oliver Twist, 1948

[Enrique]

Rhapsody, 1954:

With Elizabeth Taylor and Vittorio Gassman. I watched it many years ago and, now, with the laptop, I was trying to download it but I only found without subtitles, and I'm not fluent in English. There being no other way to watch it I downloaded it and encountered the English was well spoken, I mean the actors had good diction, specially Gassman.

Half the duration of the movie someone is playing classical music. I was impressed by the precision of the movements of Gassman's fingers. He plays the violin in the movie. And those movements exactly matched the notes, as far as I could discern. There is a pianist too, and the same thing can be said about the actor impersonating him. It is remarkable the degree of perfection they reach in the studios when training an actor who has role of a specialist in some metier. You can download the movie from here.

Ahhh... The piano solos are played by Claudio Arrau and the violin solos by Michael Rabin.

Note:
You'll have to click on the download button twice or thrice. The first click will open a new tab with an ad on it. Kill it and click the download button again. In no more than three times you'll be prompted to download the file. I wanted to upload it to youtube but it is copyrighted.